A proposal to reconfigure parking on portions of Newtown Lane and in parts of East Hampton Village's downtown Reutershan parking lot from parallel to angled, drive-in spaces was approved in a party-line vote at a village board meeting on Friday. The lines will be restriped in the coming weeks, as soon as the temperature allows, Mayor Jerry Larsen said.
Mr. Larsen has touted the reconfiguration as a way to increase spaces, make it easier for people to park, and allow more room for outdoor dining. He, Chris Minardi, the deputy mayor, and Sandra Melendez, a trustee, all members of the NewTown Party, supported the proposal, and Arthur Graham, and Rose Brown, trustees and members of the Fish Hooks Party, opposed it.
Drew Bennett, the village's consulting engineer, offered his analysis of the proposal at a board meeting in January. The Reutershan lot contains 318 spaces, Mr. Bennett said, and reconfiguring the spaces on the northern and eastern sides would create seven more. To allow for safe traffic flow, the lanes adjacent to the spaces would have to be made one-way.
On Newtown Lane, parking spaces would be reconfigured on both sides of the street between Park Place and Main Street, and result in an increase of about 12 spaces.
To accommodate the angled parking, striped midstreet pedestrian safety zones would have to be removed, as would a left-turn lane for westbound traffic turning onto Park Place. For much of the eastbound stretch between Park Place and Main Street, the two existing lanes would be reduced to one, but closer to the intersection with Main Street, a lane for those seeking to make right turns would remain and would accommodate about six cars, according to Mr. Bennett. Mr. Graham and Ms. Brown said the proposal threatened to create a bottleneck on Newtown Lane. "We have two travel lanes that back up even now, if we reduce that to one, I'm concerned that we're going to back this up to the high school," Mr. Graham said at the time. Mr. Bennett said the backup was mainly caused by drivers who emerge from the Park Place exit from the Reutershan lot and attempt to enter the lane to make a left turn onto Main Street. The right turn lane, he said, is not heavily used.
Mr. Graham and Ms. Brown remained skeptical on Friday. "I think we are inviting absolute traffic gridlock," said Mr. Graham of angled parking on Newtown Lane. Both he and Ms. Brown expressed concern about the dangers of backing out of parking spaces into traffic, and he recommended the village hire a traffic consultant to study the ramifications. Making the change in the Reutershan lot is less "problematic," Mr. Graham said, but Ms. Brown said backing out of spaces in front of John Papas Cafe could be dangerous because of their proximity to the traffic entering the lot.
Ms. Brown pointed out that because the village allows delivery trucks to temporarily double park on streets between 7 a.m. and 11 a.m., having just one eastbound travel lane on Newtown could create a backup. "Drivers would have to go into another lane of traffic, or wait until the truck has moved," she said. Once the thoroughfare becomes known for traffic snarls, the village's quieter streets will become more heavily trafficked, she said. She also worried that drivers would inadvertently back into pedestrians traversing the street outside the crosswalk. Given the surge in traffic during the summer, she asked Mr. Larsen to at least wait until the fall to implement the proposal.
Mr. Larsen said he wanted to make the change before the fall so that restaurants could take advantage of the space for outdoor dining. He and Ms. Melendez said they would prefer to see Newtown Lane become more pedestrian-centric. "I see no reason to have two lanes of traffic," Mr. Larsen said. "It's like a highway -- people want to have a pedestrian area, and outdoor seating. If you're using Newtown Lane as a through road, you're going to have to find another way, because if you're coming down Newtown Lane, you should be looking for parking. I'm not really concerned if the traffic backs up . . . it doesn't matter to me, because it's supposed to be about finding parking and enjoying our village."
"Sag Harbor and Southampton Village have done this for years," Mr. Larsen said of diagonal parking. He researched accident statistics on Main Street in Sag Harbor Village and Newtown Lane for the past three years, he said, and found that there had been fewer accidents (as many as 31 fewer in 2019) in Sag Harbor each year.
Police Chief Michael Tracey said that, to ensure the change to diagonal parking goes smoothly, traffic control officers will focus more on directing traffic rather than writing citations this summer.
"I think it's worth giving it a try," said Mr. Minardi, who pointed out that traffic flow is often shut down now due to drivers' failed attempts at parallel parking. If the experiment doesn't work, he said, the village could easily restripe and revert back to parallel parking.
"I'm excited about the diagonal parking," said Ms. Melendez. "I don't think it will create chaos, and it will be great for the look of Newtown Lane."
When Mr. Graham and Ms. Brown continued to criticize the proposal, citing the potential for drivers to accidentally hit the gas while facing village sidewalks, or swerve into oncoming traffic to avoid a double-parked delivery truck, Mr. Larsen accused them of using "scare tactics" against the proposal.
"This is not scare tactics, this is just legitimate concerns
